Welcome to the official Rise of the Reds forum. Please take a moment to read the following answers to frequently asked questions.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Q01 What are the core features of the various factions and sub-factions?Q02 Will unit/structure/ability X from Shockwave make an appearance in Rise of the Reds?Q03 How far-reaching are the differences between sub-factions? Like, will every sub-faction get their own custom main battle tank, infantry, hero unit, superweapon, etc?Q04 How will the in-game general selection work in version 2.0?Q05 Will a later version of ROTR include a noteworthy singleplayer component aside from AI skirmish?Q06 Why don't you add a target button for ECA howitzers on the left side of the screen? They would be so much more convenient to manage that way.Q07 Could you add some power or ability that allows all factions to transfer, donate or generate some emergency funds for their allied players?Q08 What is with the names? Why are ECA generals referred to by their first names? Also, Aleksandr isn't a real Russian surname.Q09 What are you going to do after the final version of ROTR has been released?

Q01 What are the core features of the various factions and sub-factions?The Russian Federation (or Russia for short) is a steamroller type faction that keeps the enemy occupied with decent, affordable infantry units early on while building up the economy to field an assault force of strong armoured vehicles and helicopters to deliver a crushing blow. They excel at brute force assaults, but tend to be unsubtle and direct to a fault. Their sub-factions are Rapid Deployment, which capitalises on fast expension using helicopters and elite infantry, Advanced Weapons, which can utilise more exotic Tesla and railgun technologies and Tactical Ballistics with a great variety of long-range bombardment weaponry.

The European Continental Alliance (ECA) is a very defensive faction. The Europeans are excellent at holding ground, letting the enemy exhaust himself trying to break through their defences, then mount a decisive counter-attack using powerful experimental weapon systems. What they lack in air assets, they compensate with unrivalled long range artillery and area denial weapons. Their sub-factions are Royal Guard, which takes their defensive capabilities to an extreme, Mechanised Assault which takes the fight forward with a combination of mobile infantry and fast vehicles and Fire Support which has a greater arsenal of artillery and close air support at their disposal.

The United States of America (USA) are a generalist faction with a vast selection of versalite infantry, vehicles, air units and support assets, including several unmanned weapon systems. Their tactics rely heavily on mobility and precision and their 'jack of all trades' nature allows them to implement any kind of tactic, whether defensive or offensive, infantry-, vehicle-, or air-heavy. On the negative side, their units, while reliable, tend to be on the expensive side and the sheer variety of options requires good planning to be fully exploited. Their sub-factions are Special Forces, which put additional emphasis on strong, highly mobile infantry units, Tank Command, which uses a wider range of armoured vehicles and Air Force with advanced planes and helicopters.

The Global Liberation Army (GLA) is very different in ROTR, acting less like a conventional field army and even more like the covert, micro-intensive guerilla faction they were intended to be. GLA forces tend to be cheap and weak at first, but a variety of upgrades as well as the combined effects of veterancy and salvage make them very potent if you can keep them alive long enough. To that end, the GLA relies on stealth and excellent mobility. Their sub-factions are Bio Command which uses a number of biological and chemical weapons to overwhelm enemies, Terror Cell which combines stealthy hit & run tactics with powerful explosive suicide attacks and Warlord, which capitalises on a stronger income and foregoes subtlety in favour of brute force.

The People's Republic of China (PRC or China for short) is a spammer type faction that is designed to over-run the enemy with hordes of individually weak, expendable units that can be fielded in large numbers. They benefit from a number of offensive buffs and a stunning arsenal of special effect weaponry to confound and destroy the enemy. Their sub-factions are Red Army, which takes the hoarding of infantry and tanks to a maximum, Special Weapons which applies secondary effects such as napalm, EMP and radiation to many of their weapons and Secret Police, which seeks to keep a constant eye on the enemy while using a wide variety of electronic countermeasures to stop enemy forces dead in their tracks.

Q02 Will unit/structure/ability X from Shockwave make an appearance in Rise of the Reds?Generally speaking, we try to minimise the similarities between ShW and ROTR. Both projects have entirely different design premises and having too much shared content would take away from the uniqueness of both mods.

Q03 How far-reaching are the differences between sub-factions? Like, will every sub-faction get their own custom main battle tank, infantry, hero unit, superweapon, etc?Overall, sub-factions in ROTR will have a lot more in common with their main-factions than they had in ShW, but their individual playstyles and tactics will still be very clearly pronounced with a good number of unique units, structures and abilities. There's still going to be plenty of features to tell the various sub-factions apart from eachother and make them all fun and interesting to play with, but it won't be taken to an extreme. It's better to have a few unique units that are actually completely different from eachother than having many units that merely look different for the most part. Also, while there will be unique units, structures, powers and abilities, there will be NO differences between hero units and superweapons among the sub-factions.

Q04 How will the in-game General selection work in version 2.0?Unlike in ZH/ShW, players will actually select their general/sub-faction when they're already in the game as opposed to choosing them during the set-up phase. This kind of system was originally intended to be in Generals and we decided to implement it. In practice, this means that you start the game with nothing but a Command Center from which you get to choose between the three sub-factions of the main-faction you previously selected. Your choice, which will be permanent for the rest of the match and which will not be openly announced to other players, then unlocks your respective build unit and tech-tree.

Q05 Will a later version of ROTR include a noteworthy singleplayer component aside from AI skirmish?As it stands, we have plans for two mini-campaigns, one for the European, one for the Russian faction. The missions will take place on unique maps, each with their own set of scripted events, objectives and storylines. However, making these missions is a very time consuming process which means that they may very well be among the last features that will eventually be implemented. We also hope to include a game mode reminiscent of the ZG Generals Challenge in which you have to choose a faction and defeat all the others in a series of siege battles.

Q06 Why don't you add a target button for ECA howitzers on the right side of the screen? They would be so much more convenient to manage that way.Whilst such a feature would be quite convenient indeed, it cannot be implemented due to a number of technical issues that arise from the fact that ECA howitzers aren't meant to have unlimited range due to design reasons. Unlike all the other powers which call in a strike from outside the map, you cannot assign a target button to an on-map asset that only has limited range, at least not in a way that we would consider feasible and clean from a coding perspective, since any workaround solution would produce undesirable side-effects.

Q07 Could you add some power or ability that allows all factions to transfer, donate or generate some emergency funds for their allied players?This might be technically possible but it is not desirable from a gameplay perspective. Simply put, if a player runs out of funds, it's either because his opponent managed to crash his economy or because he failed to plan well with his resources. Both scenarios are crucial to the outcome of a game and we're not going to add any cheap meta tricks that artificially keep bankrupt players alive or cheat successful players out of their well-deserved victory. Not only would this create a frustrating and unnatural game progression, but it also makes it more likely for a match to turn into an endless stalemate of ineffectual reciprocal attacks because players that should logically be defeated - either by their opponents skill or their own mismanagement - would stay in the game regardless. Long story short: If a player spends all of his funds, fails to secure new sources of income or finds himself at the receiving end of a successful attack on his logistics, he has to feel a consequence and either get back on his feet by his own ability or accept his defeat.

Q08 What is with the names? Why are ECA generals referred to by their first names? Also, Aleksandr isn't a real Russian surname.The ECA generals were named many years ago when we didn't really pay much attention to lore and story consistency. They were given these names because we wanted to make them recogniseable and easy to memorise. As with many things from that time, we decided to leave this unchanged because at some point, everyone simply got used to it and it would have only been needlessly disruptive to dedicate a whole update to saying 'hey guys, in-game, we're gonna refer to General Wolfgang as General von Kuerten now'. The story itself does acknowledge that these are obviously not their actual surnames and added full names for all generals a whole while ago, around the time our lengthy hiatus was over. The same, incidentally, goes for that recurring naming issue with Aleksandr where some people like to point out that it's not a real Russian surname either. The reason for that apparent error is the same as stated above -but- at the same time, it is perfectly valid to assume that Aleksandr, being an insane man with a superiority complex, probably adopted some kind of war name to further add to his public persona or make a mystery of his past. The story might even touch upon that at some point but the bottom line is, the names will not be changed because doing so now as part of some elaborate retcon would only make things needlessly confusing in conversations between people who got used to the names at different points in time.

Q09 What are you going to do after the final version of ROTR has been released?While we are currently exploring some possibilities and early ideas, we cannot make any reliable statements at this time. However, we can definitely rule out the possibility of starting a new mod project based on Zero Hour or any other C&C game for that matter. We've been working with this game for roughly a decade now and it'll be time for us to let go once ROTR has been completed and the newer C&C titles don't provide us with any creative or technical incentives to work with them. Whatever the future may hold for SWR, you will be informed when the time is right.